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André Green, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, died in 2012 at the age of 84. This slim volume assembles papers from a conference hosted by the Institute of Psychoanalysis in his honour two years later. Taken together they provide a
fascinating glimpse into Green's ideas and influence, and to his stature and warmth as a man.
Francophone psychoanalysis is generally viewed by its anglophone counterparts with a mixture of awe and incomprehension. Every French baccalaureate candidate, we are told, is expected to be familiar with Freud; autism routinely treated with psychoanalysis; psychodynamic psychotherapy - worse still cognitive behavioural therapy - considered Coca-Cola capitalist aberrations. Meanwhile, the ‘Freud wars’ between the Lacanians and the IPA-certified psychoanalysts continue. With honourable exceptions, several of whom - Perelberg, Parsons, Kohon - contribute to this volume, French psychoanalysis remains a black box enclosed by impenetrable walls of Saussurian linguistics, post-structuralism and blithe indifference to empiricism. But here, to labour the slightly clunky pun of its title, with André's help, black turns Green, opening up a cornucopia of Winnicottian cross-fertilization and creativity.
As with many multi-author, post-conference volumes, there is some lack of coherence in the book, and it is difficult for the reader to know where best to start. The first third is taken up with Perelberg's scholarly account of the chronology and evolution of Green's ideas. This is followed by a touching short piece by Green's widow, Lisa, in which she describes the increasing distress he felt about psychoanalysis's powerlessness in the face of the violence of modern life - pre-dating Charlie Hebdo and the Paris terror attacks of the last few years. She introduces his characteristically philosophically freighted term, ‘disobjectalizing’, to describe how destructiveness is justified by dehumanizing the enemy as a thing, sub-human animal, or evil force.
Despite the